January 2023 Grocery Challenge

EskarinaWeatherwax

Hi @elsiepac and everyone else, happy new year. 

I’d love to join if I can. 

Budget is £180 for me alone to cover all food and groceries for January. 

I’m hoping this will actually be £160 but £180 was what I worked out last year so I’m starting there.

i started well last year, then got into a short lived relationship and it all fell away. I’m still working towards paying my mortgage off in half the remaining term so every penny absolutely counts. 

I’ve been lucky at the out of date shop in the last few months - one trip yielded sesame oil, miso, soy sauce, tinned tomatoes, passata, tinned cherry tomatoes, tinned chickpeas, tinned cannellini beans, mixed bean salad, gherkins and barley - all of which feature in my regular cooking and so should keep me going as long as I remember to ‘shop from stores’ instead of being tempered in the shops. I have decided I won’t do top up shops unless absolutely necessary and I am going to plan in a no grocery spend week once a month to help matters. 

sams247

Oh Olio......how I miss you!   In my last place Olio was very active and I both did well and gave well, but here in my little village no one is on it, and I have to drive to get to goods, so I have to weigh up the cost of petrol vs the cost of the goods.   But I persevere! 

Has anyone tried To Good to Go?  Gazing at that with curiosity.....

Ainsty

EskarinaWeatherwax said:

Hi @elsiepac and everyone else, happy new year. 

I’d love to join if I can. 

Budget is £180 for me alone to cover all food and groceries for January. 

I’m hoping this will actually be £160 but £180 was what I worked out last year so I’m starting there.

i started well last year, then got into a short lived relationship and it all fell away. I’m still working towards paying my mortgage off in half the remaining term so every penny absolutely counts. 

I’ve been lucky at the out of date shop in the last few months - one trip yielded sesame oil, miso, soy sauce, tinned tomatoes, passata, tinned cherry tomatoes, tinned chickpeas, tinned cannellini beans, mixed bean salad, gherkins and barley - all of which feature in my regular cooking and so should keep me going as long as I remember to ‘shop from stores’ instead of being tempered in the shops. I have decided I won’t do top up shops unless absolutely necessary and I am going to plan in a no grocery spend week once a month to help matters. 

Sounds like a good plan.

joedenise

sams247 said:

Oh Olio......how I miss you!   In my last place Olio was very active and I both did well and gave well, but here in my little village no one is on it, and I have to drive to get to goods, so I have to weigh up the cost of petrol vs the cost of the goods.   But I persevere! 

Has anyone tried To Good to Go?  Gazing at that with curiosity.....

I use TGTG using Morrisons.  There are quite of few Costa, Greggs type places but as we don't eat that sort of food I don't bother with them.  There are some good bags and some not so good.  The last few I've had have been mainly fruit and veg so very good, other times there can be a lot of bakery type things so they end up in the freezer for DH to eat (I only eat wholemeal and there's not often much, if any of that).  However the last couple of times I've ordered them they've been cancelled a few hours before I'm due to collect them as there isn't any surplus available which is good in some ways but not for me!  I've got a couple of bags on order to collect this evening (one for me, one for a friend) so hopefully will get these.

I like to try and get a bag the day before I'm doing my shopping so I can hopefully cross off some things from my list but it doesn't always work out that way but I'll just try to rejig my menu plan in order to make use of anything I get.

Olio on the other hand isn't any good where I live so not used that.

2Scratters

BUDGET ALERT £200 PCM

Hi All Happy New Year,
I've read all notes so far and done nothing about my own declaration for the year. There is just 2 adults here and 2 border collies. We had run on the same budget previously but had fallen off the recording perch 
I take out the cash each month to help slow down the spends, it goes into a separate purse. This has previously included everything  i.e dog food, cleaning products & toiletries. Butcher shops have not been included and have been paid for by me. This will be an area for me to work on as we still waste food   
I don't SM on line. Tried it once (about 10 years ago) and didn't like how it was managed, I had a very tight budget available and had stuck to it, they replaced items that were more expensive and caused me to go into my OD  never again!!
I have learnt to stretch the money to the month end as I get paid on the 27th. I only learnt last year (from here in MSE land) to do that
Today is the 2nd day of the month and have not yet withdrawn the cash for this month.
 
Thanks to @elsiepac for taking the lead again.

2 Scratters xx

MissRikkiC

£16.85 spent at Mr T on a months toilet roll, childrens yoghurt, sardines for fish cakes, eggs for cakes, snacks and carbonara If we need a quick meal, a pepper, spring onion, rice and kidney beans. 

These should make up things for most meals this week and leave some stuff for next week! 

£16.75 + £4.99 spent so far. £21.84

SausageDogSandwich

Happy New Year to all 
It’s been more hectic than usual here and I am absolutely exhausted from not sleeping, illness and having three children, a dog and her three puppies (she’s kicked the dad dog out for now lol) so I have only just caught up and added up my December spends. They are back at school tomorrow so I have just ordered school meals for this week as I can’t face shopping for packed lunches right now. 

I have decided to just budget for the whole of January this time for 

£250 for January, please and thankyou. 

@elsiepac

To make this month easier to manage and then I will hopefully get it back down again next month. No shopping planned until Thursday when we will need bread, milk and veg. Also need to start getting back into meal planning. Sigh 

diminua

Happy New Year,

My first grocery shop of the year came in at £14.23 - bread and milk, salad veg, veggie sausages, pasta, pesto, soups. No tinned fish or fruit as I have stacks of cheddar and stilton still in for sandwiches, and a full fruit bowl, mostly of satsumas bought for Christmas. 

newroadahead

First shop of the year £15.18 
Going to make  a fish pie for dinner from frozen fish that needed using up
Found a recipe using condensed soup that I have in the cupboard hope it works lol

mfwin2019

20. 30/350 weekly veg box
Should be Ok for a few more days before I need to spend anything else